Reviewing current accounting education research

The paper draws from Apostolou et al. (2010) in providing an updated literature review on accounting education. The research methodology is similar to that used by Apostolou et al. (2010). The paper’s objective is a continuation of their analysis through 2012. In doing so we develop an analysis covering 421 articles published over the 2-year period, 2010-2012, in six reputed journals (Journal of Accounting Education, Accounting Education: An International Journal, Advances in Accounting Education, Global Perspectives on Accounting Education, Issues in Accounting Education, and The Accounting Educators’ Journal). The identified journal papers were divided into three categories, namely main/original articles, educational cases and additional articles. We further categorized main/original articles into five sections (students, curriculum, educational technology, educators and literature review). Our findings contribute to the body of literature on accounting education by providing a comprehensive analysis that categorizes journal papers into main sections, therefore documenting main approached topics. We categorized 213 original papers in five sections (students, curriculum and accounting specific documents, educational technology, educators and literature review) based on the main topics they develop. Students‘ section was also divided by subsections (cheating and plagiarism, doctoral program, students vs. employees, assessment and importance of high school). Each section (and subsection where available) is described and discussed while including presented papers. We conclude by positioning our results in relation to the previous literature review studies. Our results contribute to the literature by documenting the evolution of research interest in the area of accounting education.

Among the limits of this analysis might be mentioned selection of only six journals directly devoted to accounting education and not also general accounting journals. Another limit is we directly used 213 original papers totally quoting 421 inputs. Another limitation of this study is not taking into account the paper of Apostolou et al. (2013) which makes our study an alternative insight into the approached area. Potential future research directions could be found in extending the analysis by including articles on accounting education published in other journals, detailed analysis of educational cases and additional articles, as well as a future expansion of the time horizon that would grant a permanently updated synthesis.

This paper is one of the research outputs of project IGA VŠE F3/2/2014.